2014 Belgian Grand Prix

Lewis Hamilton says he gave Nico Rosberg space to avoid a collision when the pair made contact during the Belgian Grand Prix.

The two Mercedes drivers tangled on the second lap of the race, leaving Hamilton with a puncture that ruined his race, and Rosberg with a damaged front wing.

“Whilst I was driving I didn’t really understand what had happened,” Hamilton told reporters after the race.

“I felt quite a big thud at the rear and then I watched on the replay just now I gave the guy space and I don’t really understand.”

“But it’s just really gutting for the result and also really for the team. My guys work so hard every weekend and we’ve had such a tough year, the guys that are on my side of the garage, just generally in terms of the whole team. This is not good points for the team, we could have easily had a one-two out there today, and so it’s just overall not a great feeling.”

Hamilton eventually retired from the race while Rosberg took second after pitting for a new front wing. Rosberg did not wish to apportion blame for the collision immediately after the race.

“I got a good run on Lewis,” said Rosberg on the podium, “and I tried to go around the outside and we just touched in the end unfortunately”.

“So that hurt both our races and so from a team point of view of course that’s very disappointing, and that’s the way it is.

“I haven’t seen it yet, it wouldn’t be good of me if I were to comment on it now, I need to look at it on TV and then I can comment about it afterwards.”

I agree with you, it should have been handled better by the team like open up a gap first and then both of you can race for the win as Eddie Jordan said in the BBC coverage, but as you said I think there’s no one to blame for this incident though.

@stefmeister@t4bb3 There’s a new angle developing on this story now – Hamilton has apparently said that in Mercedes post-race meeting Rosberg admitted hitting him deliberately. Still waiting for the actual quotes to appear:

Who can believe Lewis’s comments today… He also said he was not friend of Nico’s and took it away two days later… He is such a “drama queen”.
I doubt Nico did it on purpose and if he did he will be expelled from the team sport… if Nico continues racing next week, we’ll know Lewis was having, yet another, tantrum.
It was most probably Nico’s fault, but it was also a racing incident, otherwise the steward would have penalised him, which they didn’t.

Well, before we call Lewis names, let’s wait for the rest of the Mercedes team who were in the debrief room, to have their say. Lewis says Toto Wolff can confirm it, plus journalists who were apparently there.
Let’s wait and see.

Also @bascb for me it was a racing incident. One which stinks, and might just have ruined the championship, but a racing incident nonetheless.

What really irks me is that even when drivers think they’re in the right, but have ruined another driver’s race, they apologise. It’s the humane thing to do. Whether it’s genuine or not is irrelevant. For Rosberg not to have said sorry once in an interview tells me a lot about his character when he’s not all happy smiley and winning a race. In short I think his behaviour after taking out a team mate, and ruining the team’s possible 1-2, stinks.

it’s very easy to expel a german from german team, find another german driver who consistently gets points in dog of car and just so happens to have a mercedes powered car. cough cough His name just so happens to be Nico , Nico Hulkenberg and because he’s heavier than hamilton. Granted , Lewis wants to be the number 1 driver at the beginning the real issue is now is just have equal footing as Rosberg has managed to take out of race effectively to prove a point. The team won’t allow for Rosberg to take any blame as it would hurt the THE TEAM, there’s no precedent for that though if future issues arise don’t be surprised if on the last race at Abu Dubai should Rosberg be leading and there’s another incident their might another Driver in place of Rosberg driving (test driver) assuming they’ve locked up the constructors championship.

Wow, seems to me what Hamilton lacks in mental strength on the track he makes up with in Mud-slinging and playing psych games off it. Never in a million years would Rosberg say that, even if he DID do it deliberately he’d never admit it, it’s suicide. Round one to dirty tactics goes to Hamilton!

Anyone saying Nico did it intentionally is only complementing him…
Nico was 100% likely to sustain damage to his wing, but the correct spot of Lewis’ tyre had to be hit to cause that sort of a puncture.
If Nico did it on purpose, then he has superhuman precision!

Hamilton is just interpreting too much, he should concentrate more on the next races and go on. Rosberg is not to blame in my opinion. It just happened, I don’t think he did it on purpose as he also could easily have been the main victim like damaging the frontwing more severely and not puncturing Hamilton’s tyre for example.

I still agree with Eddie Jordan, the team is more to blame than the drivers.

Toto confirms:
“So they agreed to disagree in a very heated discussion amongst ourselves, but it wasn’t deliberately crashing. That is nonsense. It was deliberately taking into account that if Lewis moves or would open then it could end up in a crash.”http://www.crash.net/f1/news/207988/1/wolff-rosberg-felt-he-needed-to-make-a-point.html
Rosberg risked it, failed but did not intentionally crashed on Hamilton. His mistake.
But then again this is what I call racing… you risk to pass, sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t. Alonso maade teh same mistake today, just was lucky Vettel didn’t get a puncture… no penalties hence nothing else to say besides it was his fault.

I have been thinking about the incident since the race ended and knowing that ROS tried to “make out a point” kind of finally led me to understand the whole situation. All this year Hamilton have pushed Rosberg a little bit harder than any other driver when defending or trying to make an overtake. This was possible as he knew that Rosberg would always back off to prevent any form of collision (this, in my view, can go back to Bahrain). I don’t think that causing a collision is the best way to make this point clear, but also I believe that at some point this was bound to happen in racing if both drivers are on a really equal footing.

Nonsense. The guy in behind is in the leaders blind spot and is not even half a car length behind. He then went into the leaders driving line. There is NO other possible outcome. This was quite clearly deliberate or a total amateur mistake but either way Rosberg doesn’t deserve to be in F1 much less leading. He’s only there because of the car and dirty tricks.

You GOTTA respect Lauda’s opinion. His point was that if it happened late in the race would be one thing but to have it happen in the 2nd lap is what made it so unacceptable. There was nothing on the line at that point. He had the whole race to pass. Why make such a high risk move in the 2nd damn lap! Just really poor judgement at an absolute minimum. I’m convinced it was more than that.

Translating: Rosberg had plenty of time to try to get past Hamilton, but ruined the latter’s race with a reckless attempt to pass, and also compromised his own.

It would be really great if Rosberg and his internet defenders could just once accept he was out of order. This is without getting into the merits of just how careful he was truly being to avoid contact with Hamilton’s rear tyre.

You missed the point: irrespective of how deliberate you think Rosberg’s damage to Hamilton’s tyre was – I think it was deliberately reckless, he had far less to lose – the point was making an aggressive challenge so early in the race. That’s what the Mercedes team were presumably livid about.

I would like to know why this didn’t happen. Fact, Rosberg caused a collision this should raise an investigation from the Stewards, whether it was a racing incident, intentional, did/didn’t deserve a penalty, it should at least been investigated.

I think it was a racing incident that could have been avoided and that’s why I can’t quite understand why Nico Rosberg refuses to apologize to his team and to his team mate. His lack of effort to improve the atmosphere at Mercedes really mystifies me.

He had the chance to say sorry while standing on the podium and he didn’t. Again he could have done that when a journo directly asked him if it was a reason to say sorry to the team and Nico just said: “I don’t know!”…

Hamilton has been pulling those kind of moves all season too, I suppose this time Rosberg didnt back off. Also, nothing happened with Hamilton ignoring the team in Hungary, so I doubt anything will come out of this one either.

@austus Yes and no. It’s true Hamilton defends aggresively, as against Ricciardo in Hungary, and it’s also true he tend to make big noise when something happens. But he knows he is chasing in the championship, so I don’t think he “closed the door” to Rosberg. I don’t see something intentional in Rosberg either, it’s just that today he was making many mistakes, such as the big blocking when trying to pass Vettel, and getting stuck (it’s not a mistake but it was a consequence for the broken wing and “squared” tyre).
It was a race incident in my opinion. FIA should really do something with the rules regarding front wing width, they are so wide that drivers keep cutting tyres and breaking wings.

Sky – esp Brundle – spent the entire race trying to find a way to NOT blame Nico for the incident.
Nothing new there, he has never liked Hamilton.
But it was painful to hear them scrape the barrel for “clumsy” and “unintended” and similar words.

Wolff said “it” was unacceptable. I think this plays into Mercedes’ hands: they now have a good reason to impose team orders which I think they wanted all along. I don’t buy the Nikki-Toto good cop-bad cop routine. I think they’re company men and they want a situation that is the most acceptable to the corporation, which is to say the continuation of the current positions in the driver’s championship and continued and controlled 1-2s for the team. We can now kiss goodbye officially to “letting them race”. The only question is whether Lewis will go along with it because if he doesn’t he might as well forget about this year’s championship.

Toto or Niki didn’t blame anyone specifically. All they said was what happened was unacceptable and a bad result for Mercedes.
If you think they said something specific about Nico then you are making it up!

I don’t think you listen to Toto’s comments. He clearly says that Rosberg was at fault and the first questions about the booing while on podium absolutely no defence of his driver.
First listen, then comment.

Pretty much how I see it. Rosberg went in there either to pass Hamilton and win back the position or let Hamilton “risk the race” by defending (as he clearly has the right to do).

A bit of a Senna move, when Rosberg is the guy with less to lose at that point (i.e. if they both crash he would still be ahead) @maroonjack. I have no doubt that Rosberg felt Hamilton’s defence and attacks have been based on the assupmtion that Nico will leave Hamilton space so as not to crash in previous races (i.e. “I learnt something in Hungary” from Rosberg)

As about Hungary i think Rosberg could potentially have been devious there. If things like Monaco where deliberate then i wouldn’t have it past him.
What i mean?
I mean that he knew the team would say to Hamilton to move over because they told him so but he didn’t get close because not only he wanted to be let by but he thought that it will be a nice tactic to also force Hamilton to slow down along with keeping his tyres as best as possible.

Indeed, what happened out there? As racing incidents go, this one could not be more normal. Completely shameful was the public reaction of Toto Wolf and Nick Lauda – you don’t through your driver to the wolves like that (no pun intended). Talk it internally if, you will. On a lighter note, we had one more of those make-it-up-as-you-go-along rules to join David Coultard’s “team orders should never be given by the race engineer” : “If you have to hack each other to pieces, do that in the end of the race, never on the 2nd lap”. Eddie Jordan was apparently content to have it done in the 4th or 5th, after they have settled in the race, but not the 2nd….

OK, in just waiting to leave Spa, so haven’t seen any analysis, but here’s my 2p.

First, the accident was Nico’s fault, but a racing incident. He was penalised as much as he deserved for it. It looked to me like he pushed for an overtake and slightly lost control, running wide into Hamilton.

Having said that, I completely understand the booing. He has benefited from his own mistake, increasing his lead and robbing all of us from setting a good fight between the two of them. He came second, while the teammate he took out for no points. Nobody likes it when someone is so unfairly rewarded for their own mistake, and their rival so unfairly penalised for it.

I cannot see this ending well for the team. Lewis will be (rightly) furious, and will not look kindly in team orders to help Nico when/if they come, pointing to incidents like this.

Nico needs to grovel am apology. While I do think it’s a racing incident, the way it works out, rewarding Nico for his mistake, he needs to be very contrite of he had any hope of retaining any team relationship with Hamilton.

At the point of contact, it was a racing incident. But it developed from Rosberg taking too high a risk that early in the race. Just because you get a run on a guy doesn’t mean the move needs to be made. Lauda and Wolff are steamed because it was too early in the race for such a high risk maneuver. The driver attempting an outside pass puts himself in a vulnerable position, as he is completely dependent on the inside driver 1) seeing him, as the driver is mainly looking inside to where his car is going, and 2) giving room rather than driving him off the road the way Mags did to Button and Alonso. Even when you are a few feet in front of the inside car after braking, you have to hope the inside car does not out-brake himself and crash into your sidepod. Too early for that maneuver, ie poor decision both tactically and strategically. And the fans were rightly upset that they had been deprived so early of what could have been a cracking back-and-forth battle between the two fastest cars on the grid.

It was a race incident. The moralists will keep arguing about Nico’s personality and fair play, bla, bla, but it was an incident, and the race for the championship still goes on, with Nico preserving a great advantage over Ham.

I can understand a driver wanting to exact revenge for some kinds of incident, but I’m seriously struggling to imagine how Rosberg can believe anything at Hungary justified this action? Which means questioning his personality (or mental state) is perfectly legitimate in this case: he harboured an absurd grudge against Hamilton for not letting him past?? There’s a serious issue of deluded sense of entitlement going on in Rosberg’s head.

David BR2, Rosberg admits? Admits what? You listen to him admitting anything? I heard him on sky sports saying that he had to look at the images to understand what happened. So, how on earth can you talk in premeditation? This novel of conspiracy is for nuts. For that reason, I’m out.

Agree, race accident. The thing is magnified because they are team mates. Senna would done the same on Prost, Schumacher on all his team mates, Alonso with his eyes closed if he had a good car, Vettel on Webber and viceversa. It’s racing, for God’s sake! It’s the beauty of it!! Does anyone think Nico did that on purpose?
By the way I liked NIco’s face on the podium. He was like “damn, I have to go to the briefing room now…”

@nuvolari71, Agree with you entirely. Said it, a normal race incident.
But this is a F1 fanatic forum you see. And fanaticism means: “wildly excessive or irrational devotion, dedication, or enthusiasm”. Therefore, in this forum, conspiracy theories are usually overrated.

“race incidents”? the 1st rule of racing is not to crash your teammate, which trumps the racing incident excuse, under no circumstances you are allowed to crash a team mate while racing its just not tolerated.

@stefmeister it’s the responsability of the one behind to make the move stick. Lewis gave him room, was ahead, on the racing line, getting the better exit at the right turn at Les Combes. He did absolutely nothing wrong.

Rosberg on the other hand, pushed it way too far with his team mate, tried an impossible overtake from where he was, tried to get back on the line way too soon and damaged both his races.

Racing incident? sure. But ALL the blame, and it really is ALL the blame, lies on Rosberg. Such a careless and stupid incident.

It’s one thing trying something that doesn’t work (Vettel trying to go for the lead on lap 1 for instance), it’s a totally different one when you take your team mate out while fighting for the win.

He could’ve backed off. or gone a bit off road. But he made a huge mistake and it’s totally his fault.

What is wrong with people today!!! No one remeber Hamilton got a penaulty for hitting webbed in the same way and puncturing his tyre???

If you think racing incident then you seriously misunderstand racing.

Roseberg used to have my respect but this season hes proved himself a usless racer.

Atleast in F1 now you know on the last race double points if your behind your chapionship rival you can pull that move, ruin his race and get away with it.
Sick of F1 rules that only apply for certain people.

Total total rubbish. It as a deliberate take out. If a world class driver makes a mistake one in a season and it costs his teammate the race or to lose places …it is an incident. If it happens twice .. things start to look a little suspect, but when it happens three and four times in one season …I am sorry, this was deliberate … and cunningly so. Rosberg knew that it is impossible to prove he did it deliberately because he can just claim ..” oooops, my bad, I misjudged” Sorry, but someone who has been racing for as long as Rosberg has …do not “misjudge” like that.

This proves whet everyone thought about Monaco and it is disgraceful. Rosberg is not as good a driver as Hamilton, but what he lacks in skill, he makes up for in deviousness and dishonesty

Nico was totally irresponsible to attempt that! Today’s commentary on his close wheel to wheel encounters suggests he is not that good and that forced this situation, he got annoyed at Hamilton taking him on the opening lap. His words are “I was proving a point!” What point Im still wondering? He took a chance actually, and he made mess of it. Exactly where was Hamilton supposed to go? He was in front and taking the racing line, Nico just cut into the line, he had space to move wide and take him again when DRS came online. the battle between them over the year was exciting, Im sure we all wanted it to continue, right? now its all but dead and gone!, Who knows perhaps he will continue attacks like that and come off far worse next time? Clearly a lot of F1 fans saw it as unsportsmanlike and unprofessional, I say i have to agree… !

Rosberg will cheat to win – as is now by his own admittance.
Just like Lance Armstrong – how low can anyone get – take credit and the glory and fame – all of which you have no right to.
What will you tell your children one day – ?

Whether he meant it or not, Rosberg is to blame for losing the team a 1-2, 2-3 or 1-3 and denied every British (and Hamilton fans from other countries) fan who drove to belgium (which is a lot!) watching their driver racing which is sad.

@yes-master Custard??? What are you on about? Tell the fans at the track, not me… the fans are king, without the fans there is no sport. The sponsors will speak when they realise Rosberg is making them look like a bunch of chumps. Grow a pair.

I booed Nico at spa. It wasn’t aimed (entirely) at him personally. I was showing my displeasure at the situation. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, his carelessness robbed us fans of seeing them battling it out on track. He was also rewarded for his mistake, opening up his lead over his main rival.

Why should I not allow my displeasure? How is it childish? That was the first F1 GP I have been to, and although I enjoyed the entire weekend immensely, into feel robbed.

@yes-master and trying to dictate to the fans how and when they should express their honest and passionately held feelings is appropriate is it? Sounds like a dictatorship to me… Try to silence the fans and they will walk, so will the sponsors, and then so will the drivers. There’ll be nothing left, so who cares about your, or Nico’s feeling? Not me! Have a lovely day.

@drmouse, you’re allowed to boo whenever you want. Was Ham in Nico’s shoes, would you boo him? Or would you give him the benefit of the doubt? You see, booing is easy and irresponsible. But they are professionals. So, imo, we have to have all the details first (which you hadn’t) to judge in publicly. For that reason, I think booing is childish, as it is irresponsible. But that’s my opinion.

@trenthamfolk, Oh my, we are so melodramatic aren’t we… I dictate nothing. This is a public forum. I give my opinion freely. I never judged a driver in public, and never booed any on the podium. Why? Because I respect them as professionals they are. But fans are free to do whatever they want, and they can boo too. But that doesn’t make them right. Or changes F1 for better. I still believe that everyone is entitled to the benefit of the doubt. Nico too. Ham as well. Period. So you see, I’m far from being a dictator (if you know what that is). A lovely day to you too.

lauda is a pain, not the most balanced of commentators, ad surprised that Toto Wolf would so publicly speak against one of his drivers like that, this is something to be discussed ‘in team’ not with the BBC!

Yeah but the reality is he’s their WDC leader. He might get told off but it’s not like they’re going to exile him for it. Lewis can’t do much really except come back in Italy and win… Or come back in Italy and do what he just got done

Nico had a chance to apologise on the podium, he didn’t, which for me says pretty much everything about it.
He might win the WDC, but it is clear from the Monaco quali incident and this incident that he is a cheat.

Well, that’s my opinion. I think Lewis has raced quite fairly this season. Nico has not, and that’s why I think he is a cheat.
But this is eventually a good thing, because it would be lovely to see Lewis reunited with Ron Dennis at McLaren, the best F1 team ever. And if Ron can hold onto Jenson, then we can have the best of all three worlds: the fastest driver in Lewis, the best overall driver in Jenson, and the best team run by the best team boss in the world.
Wishes…

@xenomorph91 I think he will stay at Mercedes and having Wolff and Lauda voicing their disapproval to Nico’s move kinda helps the cause. Lewis was very cool talking to journalists and that’s a good thing.

I rate it as a racing incident that ended poorly and that is more Nico’s fault but neither are blameless. I do think Lewis should have been wary as they were side by side and Nico would have had to get far out of it or go off track. Not to mention Lewis has previously misjudged someone with a front wing beside him at Spa before with calamitous effect.

Furthermore, wings were being clipped left and right and the only reason it matters is because of the puncture. Alonso hit Vettel near the end and lost his endplate. No one says a word. The only difference was the bad luck of a puncture. And that is why it is a racing incident, in my opinion.

Nico should have slowed, Lewis shouldn’t have moved on him. If it was ill-advised for Nico to try that move on lap 2, then it was ill-advised to shut the door so vigorously (i.e. next to another driver’s front wing) on lap 2.

[[Hamilton used more powerful engine settings in Bahrain that were disallowed by the team. Neither are cheating. They are trying everything to win.]]

These kinds of incidents happen way too fast for him to remember every small detail. If you’d ever driven a racing car then you’d know that half of your moves are done so automatically that you barely realise you are doing anything at all.

By Andrew Benson
Chief F1 writer
Lewis Hamilton claims Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg admitted in a post-race meeting that he deliberately hit him during Sunday’s Belgian Grand Prix.
Hamilton’s race was effectively ended when he suffered a puncture on lap two at Spa after Rosberg collided with him.
The German went on to finish second, extending his lead in the championship to 29 points with seven races left.
“We just had a meeting about it and he basically said he did it on purpose,” said Hamilton.
The 2008 world champion added: “He said he could have avoided it, but he didn’t want to. He basically said, ‘I did it to prove a point’.”
Hamilton said he was “gobsmacked” by Rosberg’s admission:
“He just came in there and said it was my fault,” added the Englishman, who returned to the race after having his left rear tyre replaced only to quit with just a few laps remaining.

Two things: this is the BBC – i.e. a very favourable platform for British Hamilton and 2. Lewis Hamilton claims only tells us Hamiltons version of the events, of the meeting and interpreting.

Toto Wolff later said that while Rosberg did admit he might have done more to avoid the accident, he did NOT hit his teammate deliberately but feels Lewis should not have defended as aggressively as he did.

Sure enough, Rosberg seems to have deliberately put Hamilton up with the choice of defending and risking contact or not defending and losing position. Not something that should be encouraged amongst teammates, but then again, its quite possible that Hamilton did more or less the same to Rosberg in the past (last in Hungary), be it later in the race.

I think Lewis has a huge mountain to climb, therefore, I think Ricciardo’s is even bigger…. they will not hit each other or have mechanical failures every other weekend. Dan has was three races that evolved very favorably for him, not taking anything from his amazing drives but he won in Canada when Mercedes had problems, he won a rain hit and SC influenced race in Hungary and today he collected the fruits from Mercedes problems again, so…

Yes. This could be the mother of all sneaky championships by the guy with the slower car, just like Raikkonen’s or Prost in 86. Who knows what might happen? Bit of pressure applied to some fairly suspect egos and an untested management committee (never a good thing) by the team that’s won the last four titles (even if they’re incapable of preparing two reliable cars)

If it was Formula Ford, yes, it would be a typical racing incident. But it’s F1. Eddie Jordon had it right when he said that “Nico knew that if he lost the first corner to Lewis, he was gone”

ROS was more than clumsy. He was desperate and unsporting–and he knew it. Did you see his body language after the race? If the roles were reversed, HAM would not want to gain points over a rival this way. That’s why he’s so loved.

Rosberg needs to teach us all how to tell the future! You know.. how he knew that touching another car would not wreck his front wing and would with a 100% certainty puncture Hamiltons tyre. He sure is a powerful clairvoyant.

Exactly! He lost time at the pits as well. And Hamilton has relied on Rosberg backing off when he aggressively tries to defend his position in some of the previous races. This time it didn’t happen and it ended bad for Hamilton.

He escaped a lot of collision in Germany, unfortunate that the slightest contact gave him a puncture this time.

How poor is Nico in traffic lol. He is awful he had a new wing far faster car and still lost the race. Vergne overate last race, massive lock up today. He was fortunate to be ahead in WC today and now this. Atleast Merc have shut some doubters up like me about being all for Nico

“Nicole hit me. Nicole has hit me.” Haha haha god, I loved that part of the race. The best radio message of all time. He sounded like a little child who just had his mom seat his hand away from the cookie jar…. That made my day.

A ludicrous accusation. One only has to think back to the last race in Hungary to know what Hamilton can do in terms of racing through the field from the back, and at Spa overtaking is much easier, so clearly he had a car issue which prevented this. A lot of internet armchair warriors coming up with the same accusation, perhaps it would be different if you were the one knowing that, due to car damage, you might end up in the wall at 160 MPH?

Still think it was Rosberg’s fault. Especially after watching Anthony Davidson’s analysis of the incident. I think in 2012 or 2013, if you give the guy in front a puncture with your front wing it was a penalty in most cases. All this said, I still don’t think booing the culprit will change anything, mostly a childish reaction to an injustice done to their favourite driver. Had Rosberg got a penalty I think he wouldn’t have been booed.

if that was cheating than 1/2 the drivers who have ever raced are cheats. Given the amount of wheel to wheel racing we’ve been treated to from these two, its amazing contact has not been made sooner than this.

What about Lewis losing 50 seconds with the puncture and an unscheduled pit stop? Rosberg did lost time for his mistake, but at least he was still in the hunt for the win, whereas Hamilton’s race was completely ruined by Rosberg’s lazy mistake.

@wacamo – It didn’t cost Nico. He is only really racing against Hamilton now. He finished +18 points to Hamilton. If he hadn’t taken Lewis out and managed to win the race, Lewis would have been 2nd so he would have scored +7 points.

It’s better for Nico if he came 6th and Lewis got a DNF than if he won and Lewis came 2nd.

@robertthespy@edmarques Did you see how fast Hamilton was going without a rear tyre? That right there irrepairably damaged his car. If he wasn’t an idiot who would probably have made it into the top 7 or even 5.

He didn’t go around the outside. He went into the driving line and in the front guys blind spot. Either deliberate or a total rank amateur mistake. Either way the conclusion about Rosberg is pretty much the same for me.

I’m trying my hardest not to boo Rosberg away from the adrenalin of the race. It’s a racing incident that could’ve been avoided, right? It’s a racing incident that isn’t just a racing incident, but one that has serious WDC implications. Rosberg’s actions, accidental or not, directly put in jeopardy a rival’s title chances.

As a Hamilton fan this is harder to swallow than a faulty brake or PU.

And I don’t understand why Eddie Jordan is telling possibly Lewis fans not to boo Rosberg. Why are we not allowed to boo rivals questionable racing decisions?

That completely depends on the fans’ evaluation of the sportingness of the competitor. Given Monaco qualifying, Rosberg’s repeated refusal to ever apologize for his mistakes or admit when he’s been beaten on the day, and now a collision he caused that takes out his title rival – yes, some people may have doubts about how sporting he is.

If they were in different teams and Hamilton’s team had complained to the stewards, do you think they would have given a penalty? I can’t remember a consistent ruling in this regard, I’ve seen better examples result in drive through penalties and worse examples not be penalised.

Cheers for Ricciardo!
Lewis/Hamilton: So you think the back driver should not be allowed to put pressure on the front driver? If this is the conclusion for the Mercedes -board it will be a black day for Mercedes and F1.

When it came to the point of contact Rosberg didn’t make a move. He had gone wide, oversteered and just as he got his wheel back straight again Hamilton ran over his front wing. At that point there was really nothing that Rosberg could do to avoid contact.